take your answer off the air...

Talker's MagazineThe quirky talk radio trade mag. Check the Talk Radio Research Project- it's not very scientific, but places on the top 15 talkers list (scroll down to Talk Radio Audiences By Size)) are as hotly contested as Emmys (and mean just about as much).

The AdvocateNo, not THAT Advocate... it's the Northwest Progressive Institute's Official Blog.

Media MattersDocumentation of right-wing media in video, audio and text.

Orcinushome of David Neiwert, freelance investigative journalist and author who writes extensively about far-right hate groups

Hominid Views"People, politics, science, and whatnot"
Darryl is a statistician who fights imperialism with empiricism, gives good links and wry commentary.

Jesus' General An 11 on the Manly Scale of Absolute Gender, a 12 on the Heavenly Scale of the 10 Commandments and a 6 on the earthly scale of the Immaculately Groomed.

Irrational Public Radio "informs, challenges, soothes and/or berates, and does so with a pleasing vocal cadence and unmatched enunciation. When you listen to IPR, integrity washes over you like lava, with the pleasing familiarity of a medium-roast coffee and a sensible muffin."

The Moderate VoiceThe voice of reason in the age of Obama, and the politics of the far-middle.

News Hounds Dogged dogging of Fox News by a team who seems to watch every minute of the cable channel so you don't have to.

HistoryLinkFun to read and free encyclopedia of Washington State history. Founded by the late Walt Crowley, it's an indispensable tool and entertainment source for history wonks and surfers alike.

right-wing blogs we like

The Reagan WingHearin lies the real heart of Washington State Republicans. Doug Parris runs this red-meat social conservative group site which bars no holds when it comes to saying who they are and who they're not; what they believe and what they don't; who their friends are and where the rest of the Republicans can go. Well-written, and flaming.

As someone who took substantial personal risk in syndication and station
ownership, I can tell you that progressive talk has not panned out as a
viable business. Clinton's 1996 deregulation of broadcasting and the
end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 didn't
help. I do think the FCC should require some balance of viewpoints on
the stations it regulates, through the license renewal process, but
there is simply no interest on the part of Obama and his appointees in
regulatory reform - even as the president is pilloried by right-wing
radio on a daily basis. Air America's parade of management blunders
produced the downward spiral that brought us to this tipping point for
progressive talk radio, and most station owners, rightly or wrongly, see
that failure as an indication that audiences won't support liberal talk
radio.

November 07, 2012

The day of reckoning has arrived, otherwise known as the second worst hangover day or post election night blues.

To be sure, we weren't sure the outcome nationally would be in as soon as it was, and in a few places including the Inslee/Mckenna race, it still may not be decided for awhile. We do know this, it was the year of the woman and minority vote.

For schadenfreude, we tuned into FOX news when Ohio put the President at 274, clinching the electoral college vote. Karl Rove was busy with his calculator saying Ohio should be 'challenged' FOX was already calling the election though at 9pm PST.

We know to the victor goes the spoils, including conservative talk radio, with hosts like Limbaugh et al who will spend the next 4 years calling voters 'stupid' and woman 'sluts' and of course 'rigged elections'. More women and minorities turned out than in previous times, including the elections of Elizabeth Warren and the 2 Tammies, Duckworth and Baldwin to what were considered long shots to win, weeks earlier. Should we mention SCOTUS appointments?

We will follow the chatter from the blogosphere and talk radio and teevee as it makes for interesting analysis or just plain intervention on the part of public safety as the next 4 years promise to either change the party that lost into a more mainstream message or one that will go the way of the Whigs. We leave you with Diane Sawyer last night, somewhat out of it.

This just in, Ted Nugent is still alive

“If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

October 11, 2012

How many times did Ryan take a drink? Did Martha do a better job than the so-called "Dean of Moderators"? Was the religion question just stoopid to be asked considering seperations of church and state? Discuss...

Overly paid, fatuous hosts parroting fear mongering while the establishment of the right remains rudderless due to in-fighting from the grassroots and with an extremely wealthy candidate, oblivious to mainstream America making Chevy Chase's SNL Ford character look ready for the job.

voter fraud found at country club

Rich chose the week of the GOP convention to chronicle his findings in the NY Times piece... "On the sixth day, I listened to Glenn Beck, and I saw that he was good. Or if not exactly good, then honest-to-God funny."

"I had tuned in as part of a thought experiment then entering its final
lap: an attempt to put myself in the Republican brain by spending a
solid week listening to, watching, reading, surfing, and otherwise
gorging on conservative media. As would also be true of an overdose of
liberal media, it was lulling me into a stupor, and I was desperate for a
jolt. Beck provided exactly that, in the form of comedy, and to my
astonishment, I found myself laughing out loud—with him, not at him."

Beck provides more comic relief for Rich: "In Beck’s fantasy, someone in the Romney camp did have qualms about
letting an 82-year-old geezer vamp with an empty chair. But the skeptic
had been overruled by a higher-up saying just “three magic words”—to
wit, “It’s Clint Eastwood!” As in: “What could possibly go wrong? It’s Clint Eastwood!” Beck kept repeating this scenario with ever-more-manic variations, turning “It’s Clint Eastwood!” into a burlesque tagline akin to Gene Wilder’s crazed “No way out!” in The Producers
(a Beck favorite). Only at the end of his shtick did politics intrude.
Unless the person who said the three magic words “now has been
terminated,” Beck said, he wouldn’t “trust Mitt Romney’s ability to run
the country.” As he explained, it was only a small step from “It’s Clint Eastwood!” to “It’s Ben Bernanke!”—and the next thing you know, a Romney administration would be extending the term of the despised Fed chairman. He had a point."

Rich was referring to the week that was in Tampa with Clint Eastwood rambling to an empty chair. Said Beck, " “I love Clint Eastwood”—but confessed he’d found the performance “painful to look at.”

Rich feels empathy for the foot soldiers of the conservative movement, even before this week's, all but concession speech from the establishments hope and no-spare change pick of Willard Romney. Rich continues, "... those in the right’s base, who are often sold out by the GOP
Establishment, and admiration for a number of writers, particularly the
youngish conservative commentators at sites like the American Conservative and National Review Online
whose writing is as sharp as any on the left (and sometimes as
unforgiving of Republican follies) but who are mostly unknown beyond
their own ideological circles."

The praise for R$money from the inner circle of conservative writers and hosts was faint but dutiful: "In The Weekly Standard,Andrew Ferguson saluted Mitt
as “a good guy” only after cataloging his “breathless, Eddie Attaboy
delivery, that half-smile of pitying condescension in debates or
interviews when someone disagrees with him, the Ken-doll mannerisms, his
wanton use of the word ‘gosh.’ ” Mike Huckabee tried for a homespun maxim: “If you’ve just been diagnosed with a brain tumor, you honestly don’t care if your neurosurgeon is a jerk.”

Never mind the fact that Bush' 41/43 were not invited to the confab in Tampa, nor was the last candidate for the WH treated any more than as a country cousin, "John ­McCain was as welcome in Tampa as Banquo’s ghost; even Bill
O’Reilly’s much-hyped prime-time interview with the 2008 standard-bearer
was abruptly truncated for a generic podium speech by Romney campaign
chairman Bob White." Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford were non-mentions but Reagan re-digitized for the Jumbo-Tron was brought out after the 2008 edition nearly shredded was remastered.

After a Monday afternoon of Chris Matthews lobbing a stink-bomb at GOP Chair Reince Priebus, over a birther joke Romney made, FOX news permanently bolted cameras at the delegations of Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, American
Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, or the District of Columbia, all
of which, preposterously enough, were given prime seats near the stage in Tampa.

Sez Rich, "Even now, the GOP seems oblivious to the fact that its alliance with
Donald Trump, the nation’s preeminent birther, is enough to cancel out
any serious outreach to African-Americans in 2012. Were it not for
Isaac, Trump might have hijacked the convention on opening night."

Speaking of celebrity, Frank's column also points out how the right uses the has beens of late 80's SNL members Dennis Miller, Victoria Jackson and Jon Lovitz , while Chris Christie's adoration of rocker Bruce Springsteen is not reciprocated.

Beck's disaffection continues with the establishment right, " The morning after opening night in Tampa, Beck fretted aloud about
whether anyone had been watching at all. He was equally nettled by a
study showing that conservatives “just don’t do viral stuff.” Saying
that the right doesn’t share speeches like Ann Romney’s with friends and
that the left does, he asked, “Are we even in the game at this point?” I
thought Beck was being histrionic, but my own anecdotal experience that
week bore him out: The Twitter feeds I followed of conservative voices,
pundits, and institutions generated far less volume and snark than
their liberal counterparts. “Got an awesome hug from the convention info
lady at the terminal,” read an all-too-typical missive from one of the more prolific conservative tweeters, Jonah Goldberg."

free-loading states for Romney

Rush Limbaugh infuriated at the grassroots movement of the right: At the start of convention week, he replayed a Bill Kristol admonition, delivered the day before on Fox News Sunday,
that the convention had to advance a positive agenda. “So what he’s
basically saying is, ‘Don’t make the convention about bashing Obama,’ ” was how Limbaugh translated Kristol’s advice.
He was having none of it. “I think it’s been a trick the Democrats have
used for decades, and I’m stunned that our side keeps falling for it,”
he said. “The trick is: ‘These Independents don’t like criticism! They
don’t like raised voices! They don’t like partisanship! It makes them
nervous. And whenever the Republicans get critical of President Obama,
these Independents just run right back to the Democrats and vote for
them.’ I don’t believe that for a minute!”

Micheal Savage was sickened by “the eunuchs in the Republican Party,”. Says Savage (570 the new and more KKKVI) "..“Just what we need … a man who may be president, that he does his own laundry!” after Ann "you people" Romney claimed her husband is just like us going down to the wash house.

"Now you understand why the tea-party movement arose, and now you
understand why they haven’t even mentioned the tea party … I have no
idea what they stand for.” And he was still just warming up. “The
Republicans have just dug their own grave,” Savage continued. “Unless Romney
gets up there like a man and stops acting like a pocketbook carrier for
his wife, he is finished.”

Another bile-filed response came from Mark Levin, "Obama is “a nasty, leftist ideologue” and to say otherwise is to
emasculate the Republicans’ case against him. “Do we really have to be
driven by focus groups, by Frank Luntz?” he asked. Noting the lousy
convention ratings, he added: “If we’re trying to reach out to Reagan
Democrats and Independents, apparently a lot of them weren’t watching.”
Soon he was taking a call from a Republican election officer who was so
put off by the convention that he said he would vote for Romney but not
go door-to-door to corral others to do so."

Rich points out that the overplaying of the Eastwood video may have done more harm than good by downplaying the anger of the those behind the scenes while relying on “more in sorrow than anger” political strategy.

Frank Rich sums up his adventure in fear and loathing media: "That anger is certain to rage long past Election Day, and if I learned
anything in my week strolling around the conservative mind, it was that
anyone who sticks to an exclusive diet of lame-stream media is missing
the news."

September 05, 2012

The first day of the Democratic National Convention has opened in Charlotte NC, including more than 100 talk show hosts, along with news organizations who will broadcast over the next 3 days.

Progressive hosts broadcasting from Radio Row include The Stephanie Miller Show, Thom Hartmann and Ed Shultz along with most of broadcast TV and the blogsophere.

We think FOX news may be there too, since they confuse the right to protect the President with the right to vote and the GOP meme of 'voter ID'.

UPDATE

MSNBC celebrated a major milestone on Wednesday when it topped its
rivals in primetime convention ratings for the first time in its 16-year
history.

From the HuffPo:

TVNewser was the first
to report the news. An MSNBC spokesperson confirmed that it was the
network's first-ever convention victory, and the first time that it beat
its rivals head-to-head while all three were covering the same
political event.

MSNBC's victory came on the first night of the Democratic convention
in Charlotte. The network was first in both total viewers (4.107
million) and in the coveted 18-49 demo (1.432 million.) CNN came in
second, with 3.88 million and 1.368 million in both categories. Fox News
trailed far behind, drawing just 2.398 million total viewers and
550,000 in the demo -- a far cry from its ratings on the first night of
the Republican convention, when it drew a whopping 6.87 million viewers.
MSNBC was also the only channel to grow its ratings from 2008. All of
the other networks saw their ratings drop sharply.

NBC was the overall victor for the night, drawing 5.02 million viewers.

July 06, 2012

* While most Americans were celebrating the birth of a nation of patriots, the Republican nominee for president, who made much of his fortune sending American prosperity abroad and sheltering much of his wealth in offshore tax shelters, and Republican leaders in Washington, who would make the practice of firing teachers and police the policy of the state, eagerly awaited a jobs report they fervently hope will be bad for America. (see below)

Mitt Romney is in trouble. The American people do not like him or trust him. They intuitively sense that he’s not on their side. They are right. He is not. And it shows.

While the stampeding herd of the media were dramatically overstating the problems of the president, informing the nation about celebrity divorces rather than demanding that the Republican nominee stop hiding his tax returns for reasons that are obvious, Romney was failing to win the trust of the nation.

In the latest big lie of the far right, while the president was honoring American heroes at home on the Fourth of July, the right invented the fiction that the president was campaigning in France. Since the answer to the big lie is the big truth:

It is time to talk of patriotism and partisanship and a Republican Party that has lost its heart, its soul and its way. Ronald Reagan would be embarrassed by Republicans today. William F. Buckley would be angry and ashamed. The party of Reaganite optimism is now the party that hopes America fails and blames Americans first.

The Republican Party is now led by a man who insults his own father, a great man who believed the people have a right to know about those who would lead them. George Romney disclosed many years of his tax returns because he was proud of what he did, unlike Mitt Romney, who is not.

Mitt Romney says George Romney was wrong. The American people believe George Romney was right.

Never in the history of the republic has any great party been so passionately hopeful that America would fail as Republicans are today.

Never in the history of the nation has any great party dreaded good news for America the way Republicans do today.

Never in the history of America has any great party so callously and falsely blamed Americans who are jobless for being jobless, blamed Americans who are poor for being poor, blamed Americans who are hungry for being hungry or blamed Americans who are hurting for their hurt as Republicans do today.

Never in the history of the Congress has any leader done what the Republican Senate leader did, boasting that his great dream for America was not putting Americans to work, but politically destroying the president.

While then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) passed job-creating legislation in the Democratic House, Senate Republicans abused the filibuster even more than the bigot senators of the old segregated South in their drive to make America fail. Senate Republicans destroy America's hope for jobs with the same ferocity of their leader's hyper-partisan ambition to destroy the president.

Never in the history of the nation has any great party been led by a man who praises his own wealth with such conceit and claims this as his qualification for the presidency. Even leading Republicans have called him a vulture.

The party of Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt is now the party of “no” that hopes America fails and blames Americans first.

* The jobs report for June was released today. "The economy added 80,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported Friday, after a revised increase of 77,000 in May. The unemployment rate remained at 8.2 percent." Still slower than what the economy needs to recover, but not the devastating news hoped for by those on the right.

In Britain, the investigations into Barclays Bank manipulating the benchmark Libor rate have begun in earnest. Parliament approved an official inquiryinto the Libor scandal, though only at the Parliamentary level rather than an independent investigation. This came after a shouting match between the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, and the shadow chancellor, Labour’s Ed Balls. Outside of Parliament, the Serious Fraud Office announced their own criminal investigations. So we’re on the road to seeing criminal prosecutions come out of the rate-rigging scandal.

Remember that Barclays is only bearing the full weight of scrutiny right now because they decided to cooperate with a Justice Department investigation. At least 12 and as many as 16 other banks are under scrutiny in the scandal, and that includes just about every major financial institution. The fallout from that DoJ investigation is that the Libor will get calculated in a new fashion:

Under the terms of the pact with the US’ Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Barclays agreed to a six-pronged plan to “encourage” benchmark publishers, such as the British Bankers’ Association, to improve the rate-setting process by increasing transparency and creating rigorous methodologies to determine submissions.

The pact is unusual because it requires Barclays to not only beef up its internal compliance systems but to take on a role as an advocate for increased oversight for the industry.

“We’re going to use every tool we can, whether it’s enforcement tools or rule-writing tools to try to benefit the American public and make sure markets are clean of fraud and manipulation,” said Gary Gensler, chairman of the CFTC.

Martin Wheatley, the UK regulator who has been asked by the UK government to lead a review of the legal framework for Libor and other rates, said his group would consider the CFTC’s demands. The BBA is conducting its own review and a person familiar with the progress said the settlement demands were “quite sensible” and could provide a template for reform.

It would certainly represent progress for the settlement to contain new standards to prevent future rate manipulation, but it would be harder to hold to them without some accountability for those who manipulated the rates. That’s why calls to purge the entire Barclay's board, which is simultaneously tied up with just about every other multinational corporate board, seem more appropriate.

*A worker in Florida got an earful from Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-FL) on Wednesday when he asked the congressman to support a bill that would raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour.

"Jesse Jackson, Jr. is passing a bill around to increase the minimum wage to 10 bucks an hour," the man tells Young in a video obtained by FLDemocracy. "Do you support that?"

"Probably not," Young replies.

"Ten bucks, that would give us a living wage," the constituent points out.

"How about getting a job?" Young snaps.

"I do have one, $8.50 an hour," the man insists.

"Why do you want that benefit?" Young grumbles. "Get a job."

"I do have a job, but it's not enough to get by on," the man explains as Young turns away.

We don't know who did the research on these statistics, and because it is a non-news Monday in the middle of the summer, we don't particularly care. Personally, we would not step foot inside a Wendy's, we love baseball, eat often at Subway and couldn't care less about video games. But that's just us. How about you?

June 30, 2012

Not all Republican state lawmakers took such a hardline against the ACA’s implementation. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that Utah Gov. Gary Herbert plans to follow federal health care mandates for the time being, while refusing “to do something that is going to bust our budget” in the future.

Former Office of Management and Budget director and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who plans to step down at the end of his term, took what on the surface seems a more moderate approach. Daniels said he would leave the decision on a possible Medicaid expansion to future state legislators.

Some GOP lawmakers have expressed their view that compliance with some key aspects of the health care law is a way to ensure at least some state control over the process. As CBS News reports, Republican Colorado state legislator Bob Gardner argued that by moving forward on the creation of insurance exchanges “Colorado did the right thing by having a mechanism to do its best to impose a Colorado solution.”

In a similar statement, Michigan Republican Gov. Rick Snyder expressed his belief that “working with our legislative leaders to establish the MiHealth Marketplace will allow Michiganders to make decisions regarding what will be covered as opposed to Washington, D.C., making those decisions for us.”

Washington AG and Republican Gubanatorial candidate Rob McKenna announced in a speech this week that it was not a good idea for Republicans to pour a lot of time and money into trying to get the law overturned. "McKenna notified media across the state that he would be speaking about the US Supreme Court’s decision to uphold most of the Affordable Care Act. McKenna was one of 26 state attorneys general who sued to block the Affordable Care Act. But when Stranger reporter ( and close personal friend to Blatherwatch) David “Goldy” Goldstein arrived for the press conference at McKenna’s downtown Seattle offices, a guard was waiting for him. Cameramen, radio people, and reporters were granted free entry. Goldy was prevented from entering. "They are physically blocking me from entering," Goldy said by phone to The Stranger, seven minutes before the 11:30 a.m. press conference was scheduled to begin. A spokesman for McKenna, Dan Sytman, had told Goldy a few minutes before that Goldy wasn’t a journalist and then blocked him from entering. A McKenna staffer had also grabbed Goldy by the shoulders and turned him away from the door. "More about that here.

On the March 26th episode of The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly told American Constitution Society president Caroline Fredrickson that she was "going to lose" her argument that the individual mandate was a constitutionally-sound tax and "does not require people to buy health insurance." At the end of the segment, O'Reilly vowed to replay the interview and "apologize for being an idiot" if the Supreme Court ruled in favor of upholding the mandate.

“I have come to the conclusion that I need to step down to prevent distractions from this critical mission,” Bryson wrote in a letter to Commerce Department staf

The 68-year-old former energy executive gave President Barack Obama his resignation letter late Wednesday and informed department employees of his action Thursday morning.

“I feel privileged to have been part of the progress we have made together for our businesses and workers as they ‘build it here and sell it everywhere,’” Bryson said in his letter. “In my personal capacity, I will continue to do everything I can to support the president and America’s businesses as they continue to advance innovation, U.S. competitiveness, and prosperity for our people in the months and years ahead.”

Bryson “fought tirelessly for our nation’s businesses and workers, helping to bolster our exports and promote American manufacturing and products at home and abroad,” Obama said in a statement Thursday. “John has proven himself an effective and distinguished leader throughout his career in both the public and private sectors, from his success in the business world to his work leading on issues in the renewable energy industry.”

The two will meet Thursday afternoon in the Oval Office, the White House said. Rebecca Blank, Bryson’s deputy, will continue to serve as acting commerce secretary.

Like many of his predecessors, Bryson leaves the department as a relative unknown. He wasn’t a presence on the Sunday morning talk shows and kept a limited public schedule, despite his role overseeing the administration’s major economic initiatives on manufacturing, trade and tourism.

We here at Blatherwatch wish him well, and hope that the seizures are not a symptom of a more serious illness. This is your weekend open thread.

KVI am 570 KHz Visit the burnt-out husk of one of the seminal right-wing talkers in all the land. Here's where once trilled the reactionary tones of Rush Limbaugh, John Carlson, Kirby Wilbur, Mike Siegel, Peter Weissbach, Floyd Brown, Dinky Donkey, and Bryan Suits.
Now it's Top 40 hits from the '60's & '70's aimed at that diminishing crowd who still remembers them and can still hear.

KTTH am 770 KHzRight wing home of local, and a whole bunch of syndicated righties such as Glennn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Medved, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lars Larsony, and for an hour a day: live & local David Boze.